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Piero del Pollaiolo

Italian painter (1441-1496)

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Birth Date

1443

Death Date

1496

Arty Fact

The three original famous Pollaiolo paintings of the Labours of Hercules, sponsored by the Medicis, no longer exist due to deterioration.

Pollaiolo collaborated with his brother, Antonio, in sculpting the tomb of Sixtus IV, who created the Sistine Chapel.

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Although the Florentine Piero del Pollaiolo worked on many paintings in collaboration with his brother, Antonio, with whom he shared a workshop, his exact authorship is controversial in most cases, because he only signed and dated one work: the altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virginin the church of Sant'Agostino in San Gimignano.

In general, Piero's contributions play second fiddle to Antonio's, but there's a possibility that Piero was more humble than his brother, and that his low profile is due to the inherently collaborative nature of their work. In those days, the idea of intellectual property was very new, and many people just copied other people's work and called it their own, because, in a way, it was. This was, for the most part, acceptable.

In the altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin in the church of Sant'Agostino in San Gimignano, Piero del Pollaiolo, like an urban graffiti artist or muralist, gave props to the saints venerated by the locals in San Gimignano. Beata Fina, a Tuscan medicine woman, and Bartolus, dressed as a priest, are kneeling. Piero stuck his neck out for the hometown crowd, but because Rome had not yet made Beata Fina and Bartolus into saints, he hedged his bets and surrounded their bodies with luminous auras, rather than placing halos over their heads.

The brothers experimented with the use of oil paints and found that they were effective for binding artwork to surfaces. They worked as goldsmiths, sculptors, and painters, and never felt the need to specialize in one area over the others. Compared to Verocchio, the Pollaiolos were underdogs, without the kind of money or reputation that would allow them to bring large numbers of apprentices into the fold.